Adult

Erica Skyberg is 35 years old, recently divorced --- and trans. Not that she's told anyone yet. Mitchell, South Dakota, isn't exactly bursting with other trans women. Instead, she keeps to herself, teaching by day and directing community theater by night. That is, until Abigail Hawkes enters her orbit. Abigail is 17, Mitchell High’s resident political dissident and Only Trans Girl. It’s a role she plays faultlessly, albeit a little reluctantly. She's also annoyed by the idea of spending her senior year secretly guiding her English teacher through her transition. But Abigail remembers the uncertainty --- and loneliness --- that comes with it. Besides, Erica isn’t the only one struggling to shed the weight of others’ expectations. As their unlikely friendship evolves, it comes under the scrutiny of their community.

In 26 sparkling essays, illuminated through both text and image, celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene is trying to make sense of the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize --- through its exuberant language, playful curation and delightful associative leapfrogging --- that they are, in fact, one and the same.

Long before the Moneyball Era, the Earl of Baltimore reigned over baseball. History’s feistiest and most colorful manager, Earl Weaver transformed the sport by collecting and analyzing data in visionary ways, ultimately winning more games than anybody else during his time running the Orioles from 1968 to 1982. Beyond being a great baseball mind, Weaver was a rare baseball character. Major League Baseball is show business, and Weaver understood how much of his job was entertainment. THE LAST MANAGER uncovers the story of Weaver’s St. Louis childhood with a mobster uncle, his years of minor-league heartbreak, and his unlikely road to becoming a big-league manager, while tracing the evolution of the game from the old-time baseball of cross-country trains and “desk contracts” to the modern era of free agency, video analysis and powerful player agents.

A coma can change a man, but the world Jack Jr. awakens to is one he barely recognizes. His advertising job is history, his Manhattan apartment is gone, and the love of his life has left him behind. He’s been asleep for two years; with no one to turn to, he realizes it’s been 10 years since he last saw his family. Lost and disoriented, he makes a reluctant homecoming back to the bustling Korean American enclave of Fort Lee, New Jersey; back into the waiting arms of his parents, who are operating under the illusion that he never left; and back to Joja, their ever-struggling sushi restaurant that he was set to inherit before he ran away from it all. There is value in the joyous rhythms of this once-abandoned life. But second chances are an even messier business than running a restaurant, and the lure of a self-determined path might prove too hard to resist.

It's July 1992, and the Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after 25 apocalyptic years. Detective Inspector Sean Duffy got his family safely over the water to Scotland, to "Shortbread Land." Duffy is a part-timer now, only returning to Belfast six days a month to get his pension. It's an easy gig, if he can keep his head down. But then a murder case falls into his lap while his protege is on holiday in Spain. A carjacking gone wrong and the death of a solitary, middle-aged painter. But something is not right, and as Duffy probes, he discovers that the painter was an IRA assassin. So the question becomes: Who hit the hitman, and why? This is Duffy's most violent and dangerous case yet, and the whole future of the burgeoning "peace process" may depend upon it.

I had it all: a fantastic husband, two great kids, an exciting career. And then, at the age of 43, I found out I would be dead before my next birthday. My mother also died at 43. I was 17, and she warned me that women would flock to my suddenly single father like stray cats to an overturned milk truck. They did. And one absolutely evil woman practically destroyed his life, mine and my sister’s. I am not letting that happen to my family. I have three months, and I plan to spend every waking minute searching for the perfect woman to take my place as Alex’s wife, and mother to Kevin and Katie. You’re probably thinking that I’ll never do it. Did I mention that in high school I was voted “Most Likely to Kill Someone to Get What She Wants”?

The concluding Mike Hammer novel begins with a 21st-century funeral before flashing back to the summer of 1973. Nine years after the events of Dig Two Graves, Hammer takes another unlikely vacation --- this time on Long Island to help look after his partner Velda Sterling’s 17-year-old sibling, Mikki. Mikki must deal with the attention of two boys vying for her affection --- Hammer preferring the good kid from a wealthy family over the long-haired doper with an Easy Rider vibe. When Mikki gets hooked on heroin, Hammer --- filled with contempt for dope dealers --- goes on a rampage. He will find those behind the drug racket and teach them what shooting up is all about. But a final resolution awaits him in the future at that funeral.

It’s the beginning of the summer, and Nicola Carr has just arrived on Block Island, eager for a fresh start and some R&R. But her plans for a tranquil summer are derailed as the extravagant parties from next door, belonging to Julilana George, pique her curiosity. Juliana George is spending the summer on Block Island preparing for a major IPO. But she’s chasing her dreams in more ways than one. Taylor Buchanan, the wife of Nicola’s cousin, is second-in-command of a real estate empire. Her life is exactly the way she planned it, but when everything suddenly verges on the edge of collapse, she has no choice but to take matters into her own hands. As Nicola, Juliana and Taylor’s summers unfold, the three women are set on a collision course that leads to inevitable self-discovery, unforgivable betrayal, an unavoidable love triangle --- and most unexpectedly, a dead body.

A gravedigger at the city’s famous Central Cemetery, Augustin Rothmayer is an unorthodox yet highly educated oddball who finds solace amongst the dead as well as in the writing the pages of the first almanac of his profession. But his fragile peace is abruptly disturbed when young inspector Leopold von Herzfeldt, an ambitious young transfer from Graz, arrives in need of help from someone expert in death. A superstitious killer is on the loose. His victims include several maids, each brutally staked. Recognizing the killer is using an ancient ritual for keeping the undead buried, the gravedigger joins the inspector on a journey that will take them deep into the underworld of their glamorous cosmopolitan city. In their search for a depraved monster, they receive unexpected help from telephone operator Julia Wolf, who impresses them with her unusual insight even as she fights her own personal demons.

After Ava Rodriguez’s now-ex-husband leaves her, she’s left questioning everything she thought she wanted. So when a handsome hotelier flirts with her, Ava vows to stop overthinking and embrace the opportunity for an epic one-night-stand. Roman Vasquez’s sole focus is the empire he built from the ground up. At first, it’s easy for Roman to agree to Ava’s rules: no strings, no feelings. Until Ava sees him at her cousin’s engagement party! Suddenly, maintaining her boundaries becomes a lot more complicated as she tries to hide the truth of their relationship from her family. However, Roman isn’t content being her dirty little secret and he doesn’t just want more, he wants everything. With her future uncertain and her family pressuring her from all sides, Ava will have to decide if love is worth the risk --- again.